ORTUNG 13

The participatory installation KONTAKT explores the material gold as a connecting element on printed circuit boards (PCBs). The installation comprises five specially designed PCBs, which are exhibited in the Franzosenkirche. Visitors to the exhibition are invited to playfully interact with the organ on site by touching the golden contacts.

As the inner workings of everything from smartphones to coffee machines and ticket machines, PCBs are an omnipresent and yet hidden part of our everyday lives that can be seen and touched in this installation. Countless contact points on the circuit boards trigger complex soundscapes through touch, which change over the course of the exhibition.

The five DIN A2-sized, typically green PCBs are mounted on a stand in the chancel of the church. Patterns with a gold coating are printed on the PCBs, which act as touch inputs and can be touched by visitors. The changing resistance triggered by human touch is sent as an electrical signal to a microcontroller in the gallery, which processes the signals digitally using algorithms. The transformed values are used to control small servo motors, which operate the organ's keyboard via small 3D-printed arms.

"KONTAKT" creates a field of tension between analog and digital, electronic and mechanical, connected and isolated, old and new. The resulting system blurs these boundaries and invites visitors to merge with the machine and the space. By using gold as a contact and interface, the hidden, omnipresent material is made tangible again and presented as the fictitious inner workings of a machine that fills the entire space of the Franzosenkirche with sound at a simple touch.